


May I?

by LadyBismuth



Category: The Princess Diaries - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Mia and Shades are mentioned, Pierre is a key part of a conversation, What if they had broken up in PD2?, You're suffering Joseph just listen to Clarisse and go home for fuck's sake, flashback to when they first got together because I wanted to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-30 03:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21421624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBismuth/pseuds/LadyBismuth
Summary: What if Joseph had actually gone after Clarisse’s rejection? He’s in Spain, reflecting in his own pain, when he receives a visit. Clarisse. She wants him back, no secrets this time. No more living in the shadows.Beta read.
Relationships: Joseph/Clarisse Renaldi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

It had been two months since he left. She had left him no other choice, or at least that was what he told himself. The truth was that he wasn’t so sure anymore, and now the only thing that remained was the pain. He had moved back to Spain, to Mataró, his hometown. His brother and nieces lived there, and to his surprise so did the man that used to be his best friend in school. He had tried to make himself a new life there by returning to his old one. A life before he went to Genovia to fulfill his instruction as a security agent for one of the most important agencies in the world, a life before the Genovian Royal Family hired him, a life before her. Before Clarisse. Everything in his past was impregnated with her memory except for this town, and so he returned to it, to escape her. But as it turns out you can’t run away from your own heart.

He froze in the middle of the corridor. A part of him wanted to turn the radio off, but there was another part that rejoiced in his misery, wanting him to listen to the song, really listen. Everything reminded him of her rejection, but that song seemed to talk about them. It wasn’t new, he knew that. It was from the 90s and he had listened to it before, but now the words held another meaning. It talked about lovesickness, about someone who wanted to pick the most tender rose, thinking that love would protect them from its thorns, and then discovered that it had been a lie, as the wounds started to bleed. Because, as the song said, a rose is a rose. You cannot change somebody’s nature.

The song went on and he just stood in the corridor. He, also, had thought that he was protected by love, that after everything they had been through, she’d never hurt him. He had been wrong. And the day he had opened his hand, and presented his heart to her, he had seen his bleeding wounds. They hadn’t started to heal yet.

The image of Clarisse taking care of her roses was so vivid he could almost smell the scent of the flowers. He shook his head, this could not be happening again. The first time, he had been at his niece’s. They had been talking in the living room, he reminding her of that time when she chased her balloon through the fair and her parents lost her. They had all been terribly worried about her, looking for her everywhere, and meanwhile she had been completely oblivious to everything, eating her lollipop. They were both laughing at the story when her teenage son’s music permeated from his bedroom and the lyrics reached his ears.

_She was like the sun to the morning, white moon in solitude, forbidden amongst the apples. She knows she’s inside my dreams, my original sin that condemns me and saves me. She was the night rain, warm as a stove. She was fiery as a panther and soft as cotton. She was always spring. She left…_

It was her. It was Clarisse in that song, and he could see it so clearly. As brilliant as the sun, as lonely as the moon, and there’s nothing more forbidden as falling in love with the Queen. Oh, and she was warm -she _could_ be warm. Her smile, cotton candy, and her resolve… well, just as a predator’s. And she had pushed him out.

His arms fell to his sides, he should sit, or at least leave the corridor. Two months and he was still as heartbroken as on the first day. As lost. How was he supposed to go on? He saw her everywhere, and what was worst, he saw her rejection everywhere. He felt it, and he would have sworn that his heart was truthfully tearing apart inside of him. But there were no tears left to cry, he had cried them all already. There was only emptiness, and pain.

He moved, focusing on walking, one step after the other, to the living room. He was about to sit when the bell rang. He closed his eyes for a second and, with a weary sigh, went to open the door.

“Hello, Joseph.”

She was there, standing in front of him. Her smile seemed hesitant and she looked so… soft. Beautiful. Tired. Sad.

He must have looked as if he was looking at a ghost. In a certain way he was. The ghost of his past, of their dead relationship.

“Can I come in?”


	2. Chapter 2

_Madrid, 6 years ago_

Clarisse opened the door to the corridor of the embassy. She had been invited to stay at the Zarzuela Palace by the Spanish monarchy, but she preferred to be on her own. She had more freedom that way. Freedom to roam the corridors at night to calm herself after arguing with her son, for example.

“You know, if you want to escape to visit Madrid at night you should change. A nightgown is really not your best option.” Joseph chuckled softly, he was reading a magazine on the lounge, just near the corridor.

“I hadn’t seen you.” She said, pressing her hands to her chest. He had surprised her.

“Is everything okay?” He asked, slightly worried. He knew that look on her face.

“Yes.” She said quickly. Her first reaction was always reassuring everyone that everything was well. But Joseph was not everyone. “No. I have just had an argument with Pierre.” She confessed. “He’s not coming for Christmas.” She looked frustrated and Joseph looked at her with understanding, he knew how much that meant to her. “Do you think I’m selfish, Joseph?” Her face now revealed a sadness within her that could not be placated by anyone, but Joseph tried nonetheless.

“No! Why on earth would you ask that?” He suspected it but didn’t want to believe it.

“Because he said it was selfish of me to ask that of him.” Joseph was right, and he didn’t like it. Pierre was a good man, but sometimes he was so focused on the needs of others he didn’t noticed his own mother’s pain.

“I believe that it is perfectly reasonable for a mother to want her son back for a family holiday such as Christmas.” He said softly. She didn’t need to force the smile that came to her lips.

“Maybe if you ask him… He has a soft spot for you.” She didn’t want to push Pierre too much, but there was no harm in trying a call from Joseph.

“Maybe… I still can’t believe that change, though. Up until his twenties he couldn’t stand me, and then all of a sudden he loved me!” He was amused by his own confusion and laughed at the memory of Pierre’s change of heart.

“Ah, that’s because until then he had thought that we were having an affair.” Stated Clarisse matter-of-factly, as if she was commenting on the weather.

“WHAT?” Joseph dropped the magazine to the floor, not quite believing what he had just heard. No, that’s it, he was beginning to have hearing problems. It was normal with age. Except that Clarisse soon took away that remote possibility by answering his loud question.

“Yes, he once asked me. We were talking in my office and then he just casually dropped ‘hey mom, are you sleeping with Joseph?’” She chuckled at the memory. Her son’s face all red with embarrassment after she explained him that no, they weren’t having an affair. His quiet apology. The ‘but I thought…’ that died in his lips when she softly shook her head. He knew, then. And strange as it may, it was that moment that would convince him to become a priest later on.

“I can’t believe it. Pierre thought… Pierre went to you and asked you that?” He was still trying to process what Clarisse had just said. It simply couldn’t be true.

“He did, I couldn’t believe it either. I didn’t think he would dare to ask something like that.” She was calm now. She had had a long time to think about that moment, and she found it funny. Not always, though. Sometimes thinking about that memory would bring her a cold sadness, but now, telling it to Joseph, it was hilarious.

“Oh, so your son thought that we were sleeping together and what surprises you is that he asked you?” Every word he heard was more ludicrous than the previous one. He was stunned.

“Well, yes. He’s a priest, not an idiot.” Clarisse said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“I don’t know what that means, but at least now I know why he observed me all the time.” He remembered then all the times he had caught little Pierre, and then not so little, watching him intently, as if daring him to ask why. He never did.

“He observed _us_, Joseph. Both of us.” She turned serious, looking at him in the eye. He had to know.

“You don’t mean that.” Said Joseph. Because otherwise… No, he couldn’t think of the alternative. It was too tempting.

“Try me.” Clarisse was still serious, but there was a twinkle in her eyes. She wasn’t going to let this go.

“I think I should go.” Joseph got up, the magazine forgotten on the floor.

“I didn’t take you for a coward.” Her words grabbed him as if her hands were linked to them, pulling his arm with their sound.

“I’m not a coward, I just don’t see the point in discussing the impossible.” He looked down, if he didn’t see her then he could still go. He could still save the situation.

“I don’t think it’s impossible, Joseph. I love you too.” It had taken several decades and a dead king for her to be able to say it out loud. It was as if before that very moment those words held no meaning, as if they were empty and she had suddenly filled them with their true significance.

“Don’t. Don’t say it.” His voice was strained, it was getting more and more difficult to keep pretending that this wasn’t happening. But he knew, he had known for some time now, that it all was going to explode someday. Only he wasn’t expecting that day to be just then.

“Why?” Clarisse could not understand his reaction. He loved her, that much she was sure.

“Because you are the Queen, Clarisse.” The sadness that impregnated his voice was almost overwhelming.

“There’s more to me than the Queen, Joseph. I’m still me, I’m just Clarisse here, with you. And I love you.” She said softly as she took his head between her hands. “May I?” She was looking at his lips, asking if she could kiss him.

“Yes.” He said hoarsely against his better judgement. But he wanted this. She passed her thumb across his bottom lip, biting hers without realizing. She was so close he could feel her heat, smell her scent, hear her breathing, he could see himself reflected in her dilated pupils. The intensity of her gaze and the assault on his senses was too overwhelming, he had to close his eyes. It was in that exact moment that she pressed her lips to his. Years of abnegated love, silenced love, repressed love, were set free at that moment. It was just a kiss, but it could never be _just_ a kiss. For just a kiss didn’t change people’s lives forever, and this one did. Their foreheads were pressed together after that first exchange of love, and Joseph sighed, smiling.

“I still can’t believe he asked you that.” He chuckled.

“Can we forget about my son for a second here?” Said Clarisse, kissing him again.

Their kisses were gentle, at first, and then demanding. She pulled his shirt towards her in an attempt of closing the non-existent distance between them. Her closeness was intoxicating, and he was suddenly very aware of her attire, the thin layer of cloth that separated him from her skin.

And then she wasn’t there anymore. She had turned around and walked away from him. He felt the emptiness where her body had been pressed against his, his hands felt cold without touching her skin. His lips felt useless without kissing her mouth. He had tasted a few seconds of paradise and now, he realized, she had come to her senses. He shouldn’t have…

“Do you want to come in?” Her breathy whisper interrupted his sorry thoughts. She was leaning against the open door of her suite.


	3. Chapter 3

They told her to wait, that he would come back. That he would understand that she had only postponed a bit their happy ending, just until Mia was Queen. But he didn’t come back. She waited two weeks, and then a week more because Mia asked her to, but after that she had wanted to go to him. Talk to him. In fact, she had wanted to talk to him the same day of Mia’s “non wedding”, but when they got to the palace he just disappeared. Vanished. She asked everyone in there, but no one had seen him. That’s why she had had faith in him returning, because he had gone without saying goodbye to his friends, and that wasn’t like him.

She had been wrong. Again.

The one thing she knew was that he took his job very seriously, and so if he had left he would have certainly said something to the security team. It took her to play the Queen card to get a real answer from Shades that day. ‘He’s gone’, he said. ‘He resigned and he left. I was supposed to tell you tomorrow.” He refused to tell her where Joseph had gone, and it took her one month and one week to convince him after she was done waiting. Two months had passed, in total. Two miserable months of regrets, of rethinking what she could have changed, of solitary nights crying against her pillow because she had lost the love of her life and her best friend, all at once. She had lost so much in her life… The only thing that kept her together was that this wasn’t final. It wasn’t death, as the other times. This, she could reverse. She would do everything in her power to make it so. And being a former queen, that was a lot of power.

Shades insisted that she called him, instead of going to him. She insisted on going to him, instead of calling. When she finally got his address, her suitcase was already packed. It took her less than three hours to arrange the trip, and there she was the next day, in front of his door. Her hands were trembling when she rang the bell, but she regained her composure in time. When he opened the door, she forgot how to breath for a second. She wanted to hold him, to kiss him. She wanted to cry because he didn’t. He was shocked, that much she could tell. It was obvious that he didn’t expect it to be her. He looked as if he had seen a ghost.

“Can I come in?”

“What are you doing here?” His voice was strained. He looked so troubled… Then the shadow of a doubt crossed his face, and sadness was replaced by worry. “Is Amelia okay?”

“Yes. Yes, she is fine. But I’m not.”

***

“I’d offer you a tea, but I don’t have any.” He said as he took a seat at the kitchen table. She sat in front of him.

“Of course not, you drink coffee.” An imperceptible smile appeared on her lips for a second as she remembered their eternal discussions about the beverages.

“What are you doing here?” He said, looking somewhere behind her head. He was avoiding her as well as he could.

“I needed to talk with you.” Clarisse said softly. She wanted to reach for his hand, but she refrained herself from doing it. She knew Joseph, and a simple touch before he was mentally in the right place to accept it would be a very bad idea. It would only make things worse.

“Why? You made things very clear.”

“Apparently not, because you left.”

“You pushed me away, I had no other choice.” He was being defensive and she knew he felt vulnerable.

“Had I known that you were leaving I would have stopped you.” She reassured him.

“What for? To reject me again?” It was only then that he looked at her in the eyes.

“I didn’t reject you! I just wanted to postpone it.” Clarisse felt frustrated, he refused to understand. If only he listened to what she was saying, she thought.

“It’s curious, because I don’t remember it that way. I remember you putting monarchy before anything else, before anyone else.” He snapped again.

“Yes, and now that’s Amelia’s problem. I’m no longer Queen, I’m done putting monarchy first. Now it’s time for putting me first, putting _you_ first.” She looked at him, wanting him to see that she really meant it.

“Clarisse, you’ll never be able to leave the monarchy behind, stop lying.” His words were accusatory, and in that moment she felt cold wash down her body.

“I’m not lying.” She said in a small voice. When did it all go so wrong as for him to think of her as a liar? “When I said no to you -No, let me speak. When I said no, I wasn’t saying no forever. I just wanted to wait until Mia’s coronation, that was all. I should have made myself clear, I know that now, but I never meant to reject you.” He didn’t seem satisfied with the explanation, and she noticed. “Do you really think I was pretending all this time? All these years? Who do you think I am, Joseph?” She was tired of being the villain of this tale. She was not a villain, and she would not let him make her feel like one.

“The truth is I don’t know.” The sound of those words felt like a punch in the gut for Clarisse.

“You don’t know if you believe I was pretending or you don’t know who I am?” She asked, hurt. “Answer me, damn it, Joseph! Because we’ve been together for six years, and in love for far longer than that, so if you don’t know the answer to either of those questions then I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Am I the fool here? Am I the only one who wants us to be together?” Tears were rolling down her cheeks as she waited for him to speak. He opened his mouth, as if preparing to explain, but then closed it again. “I’m not going anywhere until I get an answer, Joseph. And this time we’re going to say all that we mean, so I suggest you begin.”

“I’m lost.” He said in a low voice after a moment in silence. “I don’t think I have ever felt so lost. When you said no I was so angry… And I thought you meant it forever and I left and now… I was wrong? I screwed everything up and I hurt you and myself and it was all for no reason!” He started talking and couldn’t stop now, but his eyes were fixed on the floor, unable to look at Clarisse.

“It wasn’t all your fault, I should have explained…” Clarisse interrupted him.

“Let me finish, I need to say it. It was all because of a stupid misunderstanding and I am so mad, so mad at myself. Every time I started doubting whether my decision was the correct one I shut myself out and… And I knew. Deep down I knew that it was all wrong, but I was too proud to admit it. Too afraid. Because if I was wrong then it meant that I had lost you because of nothing. God how could I be such an idiot?” He was crying then, too. Shaking with his sobs. And she thought he was right, he did look lost. She had never seen him like this. She felt the urge to hold him but felt unsure of what his response would be. It was all awkward between them and she felt sick. They loved each other, it shouldn’t be like this. It was wrong. She settled for talking first, talking was good.

“You have not lost me, Joseph. I am here.” She took his hand between hers, tentatively. “I am here, with you. We haven’t lost each other.” He lifted his glance for the first time since he had started talking and she saw the tiniest attempt of a smile on his lips. Something within her stirred and she felt warm again, happy. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to kiss him.

“I’m here, with you. And I love you.” She said softly as she took his head between her hands. “May I?” She was looking at his lips.

“God yes.” He laughed. He remembered.

**Author's Note:**

> Many many thanks to Krissie (@damemerylstreep on Instagram) for beta reading this!
> 
> The lyrics of the song were translated by me and I took some licenses, since in Spanish it does not specify the gender of the person the singer is speaking about. If you want to listen to it just search Era by Estopa (fun fact: the band is from Cornellà de Llobregat, which is relatively close to Mataró). The other song is a rumba called Una rosa es una rosa (a rose is a rose) by Mecano.


End file.
